Chapter 86: The Nightmare Ends

When she reached outside, Greta swung her hands downwards sending Declan tumbling a couple times before rolling to a stop.

’Now that right there is called bullying?’

"Who are you...What are you?"

Greta asked, pulling an iron rod from the side as she stepped toward Declan, who raised his arms and crossed them before his mouth.

"Oh, don’t play dumb with me. I heard you speaking back there in the room."

"Something about, ’Why do I feel like the air feels weird, as if someone is blocking it?’" she said, and Declan’s eyes gleamed as realization dawned on him.

’So she was indeed there... right behind me, even though I couldn’t see her.’

’Does that mean...’

"You can turn invisible!?"

"You... you can talk!"

She said it almost at the same time, just as speechless as he was.

She had heard him speak earlier, but his voice had been so quiet that she had thought it was merely her imagination.

Yet here he was, standing before her and speaking clearly.

"You monster!" she cried, raising the rod higher.

"See, imagine a poor little boy," Declan suddenly began, making her freeze mid-swing.

"Brimming with life and energy, he walks without a care in this cold, brutal world, only to step on an iron bar and get himself trapped by a fearsome-looking giant standing five times his height."

"Then he gets thrown into a group of equally fearsome beasts who gnaw and growl at the poor little boy in his cage."

"Then he finds himself in the hands of a psycho giant who tries to impale him to death with a red-hot iron from a blacksmith’s forge."

"Gorionda?" Greta muttered under her breath.

"Luckily for him, though, he was helped by a little girl giant who took an interest in him, saving him from more headaches, only for him to land back in the cold, brutal hands of another giant who now holds an iron rod above him, seeking to beat him to death,"

He continued, and her eyebrows quivered.

"Tell me... who are the monsters in this situation?"

He dusted off his clothes as silence filled the air.

The giants didn’t see themselves as monsters, though almost any Mordran would have called them that at first sight.

Yet they saw Declan as a monster simply because of his short stature, even though, from a Mordran’s perspective, he was the only normal-looking thing here.

So what could define a monster in a way that both sides could agree on?

Actions.

And right now, even Greta couldn’t argue that theirs had been anything short of monstrous.

"You might look harmless," she finally said, "but you’re still a monster."

"You could have broken that cage and escaped, but you didn’t, allowing yourself to be captured."

"Everything that has happened has been very well orchestrated by you, making you far from innocent."

She scoffed.

"That’s half-right, I think," Declan replied calmly.

"Good thing we can come to terms..."

"What are you!?" she repeated, and he sighed before straightening up.

"I am Declan. My divine mission is—"

"Declan? That’s a weird name. Most likely a fake!" Greta called out, and Declan halted, his brows twitching in disbelief.

"You think my name is weird!? What the!? All of you giants’ names start with G!?"

"Did you all eat the remaining letters and leave only G behind!?" he asked in obvious mockery.

"That’s not something an outsider like you can understand."

"Yeah, whatever," he muttered.

"My divine mission here is to learn as much as possible, a quest given to me by a divine being."

"Now you know why I’m here, and you’re welcome."

While there was no way she fully believed him, it did make a certain amount of sense.

If he had come with malicious intent, the first thing he would have done after escaping the cage would have been to harm her daughter.

Instead, she had found him reading.

It was strange, certainly, but if his mission truly was to learn as much as possible, then it made more sense.

"And who is this divine being of yours? Why would he want to know about us?"

"That’s a question even I would like to know."

Declan was serious this time. Why was the System sending him here? What was its purpose? What exactly was here?

The last time he had been sent to this place, he had spent the following weeks trying to force answers out of the System, but every time he asked, it simply went silent.

"Unfortunately," he sighed, "I think I’ve been deemed unworthy of learning that."

"Go," she said suddenly, pointing the rod into the distance.

"I’m sorry, what?"

"Go away into the wilderness. As far, far away as your tiny legs can take you, and never come back!"

Declan unconsciously turned his head toward where she was pointing.

There were treacherous mountains in the distance, and even from here, he could feel the turbulent howl of the winds beyond them. Whatever was out there couldn’t possibly be anything good.

"You really are just... telling me to get lost?" he asked, looking at Greta’s cold, merciless eyes.

"The only thing anyone else would have done is smash your head with this stick and kill you! So, me letting you go is already being gracious enough!"

"Has any giant who’s ever walked beyond those mountains ever returned?" Declan asked.

"No. Why are you asking?" she replied with a frown.

Declan’s brows quivered.

"I’ve made my choice," he announced grandly. "And that’s that. I’ll be staying here until I get a good grasp of things around here."

She huffed coldly.

"Then don’t blame me..."

She raised the rod high, but halfway through the swing, Declan vanished.

He simply faded from sight, and in the next instant, the weight disappeared from her hands.

Greta looked down at her grip, only to find that the iron rod she had been holding was gone.

"What the!?"

She lowered her gaze and found Declan standing calmly before her, the rod now in his hands.

"What..."

Her words stopped when she watched him slowly fold the iron, shaping it into a smooth circle before spinning it once around his finger and flinging it forward.

The circular rod spun far into the distance, following a smooth arc before colliding with the peak of the faraway mountains.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

A shockwave rumbled through the distant sky as the entire mountain peak, nearly ten meters thick, was completely blown into rock dust.

The sight left Greta’s lips parting and closing in utter shock, unable to form a single word.

Declan raised a finger.

"I have just one question for you," he said quietly.

"If I had flung that same iron toward the door behind you... would even the tiniest pebble survive being reduced to dust, let alone your husband or daughter?"

The question made Greta’s heart sink to the depths of her chest.

Would they have survived?

The answer was no.

Absolutely none of them, neither Grifenne nor Grildor, would have survived such a throw.

Only now did it truly sink in. The faint sense of danger she had felt when she first saw him had slowly transformed into something far more terrifying.

Horror.

"But don’t take this the wrong way. I’m not here to destroy you, your husband, or your daughter."

"If I wanted to, I would have ended him while he thought I was trapped."

"And the time I spent with your daughter was enough to run my claws through her throat more than a thousand times."

"All I want to do is learn more about this place and the other races that reside here."

"It will do us both good if we come to terms with that," he said, and her brows furrowed before eventually settling.

"I’ll believe you."

"But if you go back on your words, I swear by Nura, even in death, I will haunt you until you die," she said, but he simply shrugged.

"I don’t plan on going back on my words."

’For now,’ he concluded silently.

Illumination flared from behind them in the next moment, and Greta turned to find Grildor rubbing his eyes sleepily.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

She turned back, but Declan was already gone.

"Yes, I am. I just stepped out to... settle some things," she replied before walking back inside and shutting the door.

That night, Declan returned to Grifenne’s room.

He read and read as much as he could, and by the earliest dawn, he had finished all the books on the shelves and now had a much better idea of the world he was in.

But the reading had exhausted him, so he returned to the cage, his body slumping as he naturally fell unconscious.

_________________

FLICKER! 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ

Light flickered through the room as a pair of icy-blue eyes opened.

At first, everything was blurry, but it gradually cleared, and in the next moment, Declan sat up straight.

His eyes rolled around the room, taking in the clean white walls with their vents, the smooth marble floor, and the bed he was lying on.

’I’m back...’

He had returned to X Guard!

His hands reached toward his back, and although he hadn’t been able to feel it clearly before, he could now feel every one of his muscles under his control.

’I wonder how long I was asleep this time,’ he mused, rising to his feet and reaching for the door.

As he stepped into the corridor, he entered a larger laboratory.

It was completely dark, but his eyes were drawn to a corner of the room, where he spotted a pair of crimson eyes staring back at him through the shadows.

The lights switched on in the next moment, revealing Lady Blythe with two test tubes filled with bubbling purple liquid in her hands.

’How weird. She works in darkness...’

Declan mused, watching as the lady placed the test tubes on the cube.

"You’re back up. Your body fully healed a day ago, though you remained asleep," she said.

"How long has it been since back then?"